Teenage rant (found it, wrote it a while ago)

A seamless transition from geekprat to geektennis prat in 14 days. The water diluted his soul, fuck all else. Filtered through six layers of volcanic rock to give deep hydration..read Bad Science by Ben Goldacre to fix that little spurious and entirely impossible feat..maybe if we rip out the intestines of Gillian Mckeith for a day and use that as a non-permeable water hose and feed that deep into the adverting thinktanks bodies at the same time they may gain think of something different to say about "water??" than the same old baseless outpourings that adverts of this type always say. Same with all these health promoting adverts, a yakult a day helps your body and protects..blah blah..no it doesn't, if you have the good bacteria, you just got it, having more doesn't make you healthier or unhealthier, it just allows your body to..well...do what its meant to and does pretty well without yakult..shit, you can drink a bottle of vodders a day for about a decade before your liver kicks it..dont listen, dont take it in. All adverts are a lie. And as for adverts aimed at women with the "added fruit extracts for improved split ends developed in our hair laboratory...oh fuck this, i could go on for hours..as Bill Hicks said, if you work in Marketing or Avertising, do us a favour and kill yourself, dont question it, suck a tailpipe and kill yourself, seriously..."and as for Kellogs making your kid 12 percent happier on a morning, what is this measure of happiness they use to gauge happiness to a precise degree of 12 percent" (sic) Ben Goldacre speaking on Screenwipe. Volvic Man, you can fuck off, and i dont think im being cheeky in asking for that.

Top 20 Albums

If you fancy a look, Soundshock have done the great feature comprising the best akbums of 2010 as voted by all the contributers, please take a moment to have a look

http://www.soundshock.com/index.php/breaking-the-waves/2672-soundshocks-top-20-albums-of-2010

Nails-Unsilent Death

Southern Lord

Someone’s been keeping a secret.

Deep from the depths of the internationally revered Godcity Studio, where Kurt Ballou of Converge fame, responsible for producing and engineering such prime works as the much lamented Beecher, has been helping craft a work of dripping spite. It’s not yet known how you hold the album, let alone endure the band’s renowned violent live performances.

Glancing at the credentials of this band, you’d expect it to follow the vein of the ‘verge or associated works and it does this, but it's a work that has one foot planted firmly in the past and one in an unknown future. Where most hardcore bands tend to take from and forget their roots, Nails have thrown up a memoriam to the past and shown that not everything about it should be forgotten. Enforced messages without browbeating ferocity. Staccato riffs without that atypical Hatebreed sound. Rhythm that holds you for a second, then kicks your face through. It’s not oft that a band can contain so many pointers to well trodden ground and produce something so fresh.

Unsilent Death as an album is an absolute fist. For a moment close your eyes, listen well and it eviscerates Nasum at their most inspiring. Stay safe at home and listen to Unsilent Death in safety…or get out and find Nails play live and enjoy catharsis in its purest, unadulterated form.

9/10
You’ll like this if Ed Gein are your chums and Hatebreed are too chummy.

Sam Rhodes

ATP

All Tomorrows Parties Festival ‘The Nightmare Before Christmas’

Butlins: Minehead

Very rarely is a festival so aptly named. This stalwart gathering, always evolving, ever changing but justifiably clinging to its independent musical ethos has provided to be a nightmare in both sonic terror and abominable snowy weather.

For those unaware of ATP and its unassailable credentials, for the past decade it’s been the provider and benefactor of the most awe-inspiring and far reaching musical vision to spill forth from that most comforting moment-the inspired idea. Imagine for a moment, that you could call upon your most adored artist to headline a festival, then that artist has a convocation with like minded and admired artists and gets them to play said festival, until you harbour a veritable feast of aural ingredients. (Just to veer into the concise, it’s essentially akin to a DJ selecting songs for a set, but upon a grandiose scale)

This then is ATP…select a defining band, allow them to curate the line-up, warm gently over a completely independent event without sponsorship, finished off with the accoutrements of approachability and a total lack of pretence, no person having a precedence over another, to the point that bands cohabit with attendees in the chalet blocks (it’s held on a Butlins) so always say hello to your neighbours…It just may be Mastodon.
This year’s curators are Godspeed You! Black Emperor, a progressive orchestral rock band which to the cry of many, imploded many years ago. So for ATP to get them to reform was a coup d’état veering heavily to the epic!! You knew instantly this year’s rostra would be bursting with choice cuts.
Nobody was disappointed. Not a drop.
You wouldn’t be argued with if you thought previous to hearing the line-up announcement that the majority of sounds would be placed in the “post” (choose you genre here) camp, expectantly so when Godspeed were choosing the line-up, but in reality there’s always something for everyone from Shoegaze and Freeform Jazz, juxtaposed against Eastern Bloc Gypsy Brass bands, to your more traditional digital noise manipulators fighting it out against through and through dyed in the wool Black Metal.
The introductory night brought artists across a multitude of stages, several having to have their times rearranged due to bands caught short due to the frankly ridiculous weather conditions. This in turn brought an element of unwanted surprise. Arriving to watch a band to be greeted by a sign saying they had played three hours earlier can bring a diehard fan to tears or outright rage. Impromptu lies rife within ATP this year.
However, at the very least Godspeed and Neurosis were playing more than once, saving us the sight of grown humans weeping under a ‘cancelled set’ poster.
First up is Godspeed you! Black Emperor. An anticipatory silence falls over the crowd as they introduce the first notes played together on a stage for many years. These notes coagulate and clot, forming a pulsating wave of bass and drum, low at first, each member aware of each other, each member aware of the causation and effect they bring. This is the antithesis to the compression age, the reaction to the action of constant exacting attack. They suddenly spring out of the sound system, every sensory part of your body alert to the nuance delivered, then calm, the sails let down and you’re left to drift with them lulled into a lucid dreamlike state, only to again explode upon you and you are left shaking and breathless as strings and bows and coiled wire and stretched string unravel you and what you knew as musical dynamic and replace them with new peaks and troughs. Privy to only a few, looked over by many, those who stood for any one of their sets knew what it was to be alive once more.
Worthy of note on this night was the follow up Tim Hecker, moved forward two hours due to…It doesn’t warrant the word count. Fucking snow.
Tim Hecker’s set should be properly called ‘How to breed a feeling of melancholy in one hour.’ Tim is a world renowned sound artist, a true original sitting between Fennez and Pierre Schaeffer. His exploratory journey through sonic artefacts and the abstract notion of the sound between sounds has led him to receive accolades throughout the world. Dissonant sparks and cross faded bass rumble out of the P.A and such is the fine mastering of his music that every part of the perceivable (and I suspect the unperceivable, delving into what is known as infrasound, look it up) frequency range is delivered in abundance. There lies a contradiction within sound artists such as Hecker, in that they lurch their music forwards and build towards a crescendo, but as where a traditional band or artist would resolve the scale or crescendo, Hecker takes it away. This method wholly splits the audience. Some wanting that elusive reward, others content in the knowledge that in this film, the bad guy wins, you don’t find out who killed Cornel Mustard in the hall. Not being rewarded isn’t always gratifying, but it always makes you think.
Emboldened by the previous night’s gratifications and surprises, many go in search of a chance encounter, seeing bands they’ve never heard of, nor would ever encounter. However the word being uttered from everybody’s lips is Neurosis. The band is so influential I think it most likely that the brevity of coverage in mainstream media of metal and psychedelic music as a whole wouldn’t exist were it not for this timeless band. Most writers would go on to say how they are carved from aeon aged granite, woven with grief, delivered through cosmic power blah blah blah. They’re not, these superlatives always pop up in association with them, because there just seems a need to give them a sense that they are intangible that they cannot be of this world, such is their influence and epic scope. In actuality, they are very human and people forget just how vast the human condition is. However, they’re one of the rare bands that have managed to retain a sense of distance from their fans. See them live; you’ll shorten that distance without having to disturb your own harboured accolades.
Anyway, before that begins, we’ve a few treats centre stage. First off the bat is Bardo Pond, The Dead C and Maher Shalal Hash Baz. Each of these artists has one finger in each others pie. That being a blueberry and bastardization pie of the progressive genre. Each seamlessly binds their set to the next, these three being a truly inspired piece of music positioning and a joy to behold.
So, Neurosis time. It’s prudent to review both sets together, todays and tomorrows, to assess and briefly explore the differences between them. The sense of time in the room is excruciating, everybody straining for a view of what’s being wheeled on stage, everybody checking the time, everybody expecting…Neurosis must have this feeling with all their gigs. They must have feet this weight of expectation upon themselves a thousand times, but they visibly feed on it like a virus. The first sounds of sample and drum, guitar and vocal push the crowd back, an instantaneous reaction to the brute force being manoeuvred by the masters and there is no attempt to assuage the fury. Unrepentantly, they don’t even play to the crowd in terms of satisfying them with album openers etc, they go for the monoliths, the drawn out growls of songs. When the opening riff to Given to the Rising is exploded out, the crowd erupt into a swaying mob, all separate, all working as one. The ninety minutes pass by in an instant and there’s suddenly an empty hollow feeling that just perhaps life isn’t ever going to feel that real again. Solace is found in friends and bonds made anew over a shared experience and then you remember...it’s happening again tomorrow.
The second set is a much less attended affair, partly due to Weird Al Yankovic who is an absolute pearl of a booking, a parody of a parody, an opposition to all that claim on fame and is playing on the pavilion stage (The worst of the stages, placed under Butlins cavernous tent building, reverberation and standing waves can destroy a set here, as it did for the Yeah Yeah Yeah’s the previous year) and partly because of Clusters Krautrock excellence, but mainly because many people simply have partied too hard and are sleeping it off, or are leaving early to return to work the next day. This is a terrible shame. Although it wasn’t fully realised, though suspected, the sound engineer wasn’t up to his game on the previous night, though this night all lessons are learnt and the band are out to please the crowd. As Neurosis come to play Burn, the title track of ‘The Eye of Every Storm’, the place is still, moved but unable to move, as the moment comes when the song pulls back to deliver the growling prose of ‘This world of cold stone gives nothing in return to those who sleep whilst the restless burn’ there’s not a voice to be heard in the venue, a first for any gig? Every soul is intent on soaking up the message and the waves of emotion drawn from the fingers and mouths of these men when suddenly ‘the Neurosis moment’ comes from Steve von Till as he screams out ‘Don’t let it steal your’ and in that sonic conflagration, that auditory scream of voice and guitar becomes aflame and sets alight every single vehement voice in anger, every sorrow, all the moments that you’ve cared so deeply that it left an indelible impression upon your soul is fully realised...you feel so deeply that your heart hurts and your blood pumps so hard your chest feels like a storm and through this power, you know that nothing in this world can ever hurt you again.
It’s testament to ATP and Godspeeds excellent curating that they have managed to find a band that can follow Neurosis. They can’t beat it, but they can follow and help regain some sense of balance within. This band is Wolves in the Throne Room who are playing on this final evening. They’re a band whom seeing is a reverent one, reserved for those wanting a cathartic experience.
Wolves envelop the festival, blasting out dual guitars heavy with minor scale progressions, backed by a seamless drummer, absolutely finished with the piercing scream now expectant within the neo-black metal scene. Wolves have a deep mythology, seeking inspiration from their heavy environmental awareness and green attitude, living within the Appalachians Mountains, drawing upon the same elemental powers as their Norwegian predecessors did. It’s easy to see how Wolves came to be, when exploring their story. What’s unexpected is how soulful and joyous this music is. To the uninitiated, that is, somebody who has never listened to heavy music, they wouldn’t understand, nor would they have a care to. But were you to sit them down, explain the story, and show the inspiration, the link with nature and its reflection in the music, you just may produce a convert. Tonight, they made many.
ATP. It’s never failed. This year was the tenth year of its existence. Now, its puts on at least three unsponsored ‘tuborg'less’ festivals, a host of gigs across continents from bands you just don’t expect to see gigging very often and championing that which is so rare in music, the fact that there are only two types of music, good…and bad. Pigeonholing artists leads to arguments and admonishments.
As Steve Albini put so perfectly “There’s only three things I endorse, ATP Nutter Butter sandwich cookies and Abbey Road”

Sam Rhodes

ATP Review

Atp Review coming soon!!

Digital Cleanout

It's that time. I took a sojourn through my laptop specs and decided that with a few choice purchases, some ram and perhaps a new processor?? Or just the ram..bring it to 4gig or more. I have a 64 bi supporting processor so can upgrade to Windows7 64 bit no problem, add some epic ram and I'll have a veritable brand spanking new laptop, perfect for some live music application.

Laptop

Bibliotecheques library bastards fangtangort.

I don't like you.

What is my life, full of heavy handed waste and never looking back scourging.
breath and breath again, you lift, but never further.

My prep for the private consult with the posh spinal expert..bleeeeurgh

Mr Krishna Consult

ONLY ANSWER THE QUESTIONS HE ASKS YOU IN AS FEW WORDS AS POSSIBLE. IF HE ASKS YOU A YES/NO QUESTION, JUST RESPOND YES/NO. IF HE WANTS MORE INFORMATION HE WILL ASK YOU FOR IT.

HE HAS READ YOUR FILE, PROBABLY IN DEPTH BEFORE YOU GO IN THE ROOM…..HE WILL KNOW ABOUT SHEFFIELD, AND EVERY SINGLE REFERRAL AND EVERY SINGLE LETTER OF COMMUNICATION WILL BE IN YOUR FILE….IT IS NOT YOUR JOB TO TELL HIM. YOUR JOB IS TELL HIM HOW YOU FEEL. IF HE NEEDS ANY INFORMATION HE WILL ASK YOU FOR IT.

If he asks you to tell him what’s been going on you can tell him this but he probably knows it already. This is all you need to say if asked:

• Nearly 2 years ago I woke up with an extremely sharp pain in my neck and a strange feeling in the right arm. Over the next two weeks the pain increased greatly and I began to develop numbness weakness and pins and needles in my right arm mostly in the thumb and first finger

• My GP referred me to Sheffield Neurosurgery where they diagnosed a disc prolapse on MRI.

• After this I was booked in for surgery, however after review the operation was put back for six months whilst first trying conservative treatment.

• My symptoms have got worse and worse over 2 years even though the MRI’s etc have shown Improvement.

• Around June this year Sheffield discharged me from their clinic stating they could no longer perform the disectomy that I had been booked in for twice.

• My only treatment now under the NHS is under the pain clinic who are failing to manage my pain.

HE WILL ALREADY KNOW YOUR SYMPTOMS BUT IF HE ASKS TELL HIM EVERYTHING SUCCINTLY:
• Severe Pain in the neck, worsened by any movement
• Twitches in thumb and finger, less in the arm, occasionally the right leg
• Numbness and Pins and needles in the arm,
• Sprained ankle feeling in the neck,
• No movement of head for causation of pain.
• Shooting pains down the arm.
• No sleep.
• Skin Problem in extremities, skin thickening, peeling.
• Migraines
• Burning pain in skin around neck on the back
• Difficulty swallowing.

The most important thing out of all of this- even if you don’t say another word- you need to say to him is that you just can’t stand it any more….These problems have an extreme impact on my life, the physical nature of it leaves me unable to be independent, live a full life or work due to the extreme pain and most physical movement of any longevity leave me in greater pain and with less mobility. I understand that some of these symptoms are due to the meds that I’m on and not the condition itself and my biggest aim is to not be as dependent as I am now on medication.

The above should take no more than about 2 minutes……by that time he will be bored. Keep him interested, ask him questions and make him work for his money………………………………….

WRITE THIS LIST DOWN…… AND ONLY ASK THEM IF HE’S NOT ALREADY BROUGHT THEM UP…...

• What is it that you are able to do for me?
• what can you do to manage this problem.?
• If he can do something….what is the next step?
• What is the time frame?
• What do I need to do before I next see you again?

• What are the full costs of the treatments?

• What are potential funding options (NHS Provision etc)

• If you can’t do anything what is my next step as I feel like you’re my last option (if this happens it is not the end of the world but don’t leave his office until you get an answer)….what do you recommend?

• I need you to be honest with me…..is this something I need to learn to live with and if so how?

• What are the risks involved in treatment?

• What would my quality of life be after treatment?

• If you will see him again…..If I have any questions between now and then who can I speak to?

• If he doesn’t do it already ask him to summarise/you summarise everything you have gone over thoroughly before you leave the room to check you have everything straight in your head.

Kylesa Review

Kylesa

Spiral Shadow

Still reeling from the wake of their runaway psych trip “Static tensions” Kylesa have decided to bring up the rearguard and deliver a final crushing blow…and what a weaving serpentine offering it is.

It may seem strange to find Kylesa releasing another album so soon after the richly deserved accolades of last year, yet here they are. No really, here they are! They’ve experienced another paradigm shift. Not content with their murky sludgecore pre-Static Tensions, they branched out to dip you into the hallucinogenic swamp of the aforementioned epic. Hell, even the Baizley artwork was enough to bring the genie out of the bottle, but they’re here because they’ve turned on their own screw again.

This album is far greater than the sum of its parts, melding sun and snakes and sniper-like acoustics. The dual percussive attack has been produced to the nth degree; the midrange separation of vocals and guitars has finally allowed the two to escape each other, revealing an impassioned soul that’s been lurking below all this time.

Here there are no haircuts, no hype, no hubris and no ego.

Here the snake doesn’t have to be charmed out because what’s on offer is so succinct, so striking, you’ll be hoping the follow-up to this comes just as quickly.

Work writing

Seeing as though I've managed to source a job writing, i guess im allowed to put my writings up that I do for it..so here's the first one


Anaal Nathrakh

In the Constellation of the Black Widow

There’s a brooding sense of malice that enters the mind when it’s known Anaal Nathrakh are releasing a new album. Their musical journey is an allegory to the rise and thunder of the Industrial Age, born in the Ironbridge Gorge mere miles from where this doomstruck duo had their formative years. To this day that legacy leaves an impression upon the landscape and it’s inhabitants (If you’re unaware of Birmingham’s musical heritage then you’ve taken a wrong turn, turn round and find Black Sabbath Avenue…understood?)

Close your eyes and as the introductory notes tear out, you feel brimstone beneath your feet and begin to engage with the malevolence within your soul. It could just be the intensified production value that’s improving with each album furthering the illustrative sonic nature of A.N, though some claim this is taking them ever further from their purist Black Metal beginnings, or it could just be that within this aural cacophony of bile soaked spite there truly is the means to take over Hell itself.

This is the elixir of heavy. Every listen changes the minds eye, giving snapshots into a brutal and industrial past, flickering briefly into our apocalyptic future. The sky has indeed been set aflame.

Kerrang Vs Terroriser

And if I hear another kerrang reading eejit endorsement of steel panther I'm not coming. I just don't get it. The same people would wax lyrical about the banal nature of most pop music, but here's an entirely manufactured band created by some men in suits collecting the cash pile. It's gashmandoo. I'd like to hear some investigation into the disparity between the mainstream media ignorance of the metal culture but it's fans are the most dedicated and cash spending. A metal gig sells, fans commit for life, but it's impact is entirely ignored by critics, aside from the recent endorsement of progressive bands like mastodon, tool and meshuggah within papers like the Times. I bring all this into account, but it seems that now the average metal fan is falling into the bracket of the pop fan, by responding positively to marketing forces and enjoying bands like steel panther et al. Where's the admiration of the band that slowly builds a reputation through gigging hard and wriing well. I think Kerrang has a lot to answer for, and it knows it. When I was a teen it covered a broader music range, wheras now it goes for the cash element every time giving collum inches to the likes of te aforementioned band, Him and other associated shite. Do yourself a favour, go pick up a copy of Terroriser and find a whole new world of honest journalism and well reasoned criique.

DropBox

Send me your track

Nathrakh post for the group

How do all.

As you're probably aware from the posts by Laverty and Shymond, Nathrakh are touring again. Needless to say, those of you that have experienced that rolling juggernaut of bile soaked aural hatefuck will be doing anything within your means to say "I'm seeing them again." Those of you that haven't been fortunate to come face to face with the assault that is Anaal Nathrakh, i cannot envisage a greater sonic evening for you to do this than attending the forthcoming Damnation Festival. It's available from very reputable sources that their set will be the one not to miss, let alone the festival as a whole, which has grown into one of the highlights of the musical year. I wholeheartedly advise you beg, borrow and raid your piggy banks to get to this event.

Those of you who haven't heard or investigated the line-up so far can get more information here

http://www.damnationfestival.co.uk/zine

Whereupon you will also see a couple of little ol' bands listed called earthtone9 and The Dillinger Escape Plan, the former playing once more after an extremely long hiatus. These guys were the first bands i ever saw live and the ones that cemented my insatiable desire to see as much music as possible. To just have these three aforementioned bands on one ticket would be enough to make me travel abroad for a gig, so for those Nathrakh fans salivating over the Damnation line-up in far away countries, get thee'sen ower to the north.

Also, there's an extremely diverting interview with Mr Dave Hunt on the Damnation website expounding on The Lucifer Effect and its use as inspiration for the track, the resonating issues of what causes evil within people, whether its a cognitive element or a hereditary one and generally on the state of humanity as a whole,something which is always diverting. He is a intelligent force and well worth a read if you're at all interested in finding out about Nathrakh ethos and direction.

It also has a link to a video lecture delivered by the author of the Lucifer Effect, its content being more eloquently delivered by Dave and the proponent of the idea, Philip Zimbardo.

http://www.ted.com/talks/philip_zimbardo_on_the_psychology_of_evil.html

There is other live dates peppered throughout Europe for those that are unable to attend the Damnation Festival, check the group feed for the dates.

Also, in conclusion, you might have spotted that Nathrakh are playing with MAYHEM in December. However much i wish this could have been a Halloween gig (the connotations being too perfect, pigs heads on spikes on Halloween would have really tickled my black metal gland) this is happening on the 18th December, which is the day after my birthday so im self hijacking the event for my own ends (though nobody else will know this, thus making me a lonely purveyor of metal) but, all that aside, this gig is an amazing development, Mayhem being arguably the most important and relevant band in Black Metal...although if i remember rightly, it was pointed out to me that the E Channel or MTV2 did a 100 most shocking moments in music and the murder of Euronymous by Varg Vikernes aka good ol' Count Grishnackh (he seems more of a cartoon character to me these days, which belies his actual wickedness)...anyhoo, this countdown placed this event at something like number 67, right next to Shitney Peer's shaving head incident??? So it seems that the ignorance of Black Metal and associated culture by mainstream media (everywhere apart from the Scandinavian Countries) is well and truly going strong when hair cutting is considered as shocking as murder/necklace creating from skull shards.

Just bloody come along, Mayhem have found themselves in a truly important renaissance and their live performances are following suit. Throw Dragged into Sunlight with Anaal Nathrakh into the mix and you have the best singular gig of the year. Be there. Here's the link for the facebook event

http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=128062003911234

That's all for now, im sure the other admins have any other answers to more in-depth questions you might have.

Look left, look right, look left again!! Words to live by.

Bugbears and Interviews from less than vampires

Most things winds me up. Not a nihilistic statement, that not being an over-exaggerated follow up, things really do wind me up.

I'd like to know if there's some form of rigorous test for measuring how much people are pissed off by things!! Is it that everyone is annoyed by everything, that most things are considered irksome and were bound by some early influenced cognitive behaviour pattern that prevents us from outlaying our discourse of unhappiness to the offending article.

Whats makes you find something irritating. Whats gives us patience? Does someone tapping on a table with a beer bottle annoy everyone, with people reacting and asking for it to be stopped at varying degrees of time. Consider the poor woman in London, who did exactly that, to find the offending beer bottle tapping twat finds being told what to do more irritating than his own action and thus brings a culmination of extreme violence. Did the girl want to perform this gross act upon the man tapping the beer bottle. It surely must have drove to the centre of her soul to tell someone of twice her size to stop doing what he is doing, because that goes directly against Darwinian ethic, survival of the fittest and all that (actually, the girl was a dancer and was fittest, but even the fittest person can be felled by a sucker punch)

Instead of being taught good manners, mind those P+Q's, respect your elders by our parents...we should perhaps be taught to strive to always be able to understand that constructive criticism is a CONSTRUCTIVE thing, because to my knowledge, nobody likes criticism, is blind to what constructive criticism could bring about and certainly doesn't like to be told that what they're doing is annoying.

So, from now on, i propose a module of ethics, with an intense week every month being taught the value of criticism, through the art of dialectic argument. That or find some Socrates DNA, bring the git back to life and put one in every home.

(I know im pissing off a lot of people with the ethical implications of the previous paragraph were it possible, but what the fuck.....i just don't care)

Post modern pissup virtues

Virtuous and solemn, tis harking back to the time of yore. We shall anoint like ancient majesty, and relive and thus reinvent the wheel, creating new from old, so that that which was, shall become that which is. Peace in our time. Words conveyed with conviction, preyed upon by vultures, torn apart by talons. Together, we make a new country Prince Krent.

Sleep, rest, what is best

Is there any prudent action in sleep pretending. In lying in bed and closing your eyes, only to view the back of eyelids. You hear so much of "the bedroom is a place of sleeping, no tv's or entertainment" because this disassociates sleeping from the bedroom, making it much harder on general to sleep.

When you cannot claim any length of sleep, as I cannot with my pain and injury, I feign sleep. I lay with eyes closed pretending. Is this detrimental to associating sleep with the bedroom? Is it better for me to get up, and go when I'm ready, but I'm never ready, the sleep is never consistent. The only time I sleep is when I have my girlfriend in my bed. She relaxes me, and the pain doesn't seem too much, bar when I wake. The grimace of pain sometimes hurts her I think, but actually getting some sleep makes me worse. Lying in the same position, sleeping and the pain not waking me puts me into a worse state the next day. It's a dilemma I can't figure out.

Am I as best to stay away during my disability. Am I to keep my bedroom untainted, and so, when the day comes I can sleep unfettered and without malice, I can do so with a heavy sleep, as I have not had this past 19months.

Or, shall I lay in bed and shut my eyes and lay there. Is there any benefit to laying with your eyes closed. Does an insomniac do this? Do they try and sleep, or not try, till the body makes them. I do sleep, two nights of the week. Two nights of naught but idle grabs, then I am so withdrawn and sleepy, I can sleep through the pain. My medication doesn't make me sleep, but on the nights I do, it keeps me so, until I feel rested, and that next day, I feel stimulated, but I feel overwraught, because sleeping makes me worse. Laying in a prone position for any time hurts. So, I think...

Is it best to go to bed every night, at the same time, rising at the same time, watching my eyelids? Do you get rest from doing that. Because it makes me more angry than anything else. And so I don't rest any better. I rest in my chair, no sleeping, just resting. This doesn't make me angry. Doing it in bed does. What's a shitneck to do. How do I approach this??

Buddhists don't think content

A whimsical flourish of my pen across textured paper led to many a good idea tonight, whilst also enjoying the company of two Buddhist monks at The Crown Hotel talking about Mindfullness and exiting the possibilities of pain control through medatative techinque. Had to leave after 15mins due to pain from terrible chairs. Bad bad planning, need to think and become planned. Although even no change won't let them become panned. The main guy locked himself away on a monastory for four years to plan his spiritual mindfullness. A few awkward chairs shall stop him not.

Poetic Flourishes apparently

Been a very special day!! Grand salutation to the Krent of Thon, deep aesthetic hues of nature coupled with hard elbow graft directed at Pythagoras's triangle, with instinctual flourishes channeled through all that came. Together we bound an ethic and completed a phase. Then the bloody BBQ got going and the cogs gave out. Damn burgers.

Gardening: The physical and benevolent succour displayed by all of late has brought untold serotonin rushes with every mind reference. However, phase3, the side jungle patch needs further work, and to be true, the harder part. Team'sA+B need to scour said patch, rake and hoe, remove every stone till twelve" of tilth exists. Thereupon, winter carrots, pumpkins and squashes, spinach and Kale will exist..in abundance.

Drop Box

GardenPhaseCrewsssssss

Nothing much to report, there's been major advancement in my major source of life and soul sustenance, mainly being we did some big work on the garden today, and it felt good. I couldn't do anything ;hyisical, but working towards making it a relaxing area, an area where I can watch things grow and become is making my mind grow with it. Im not falling into the hole, im growing out of it. I know where im heading, and every seed I plant goes up. i've got too much bouyancy to lose.

Eye Patch Sleep

I rise with the sun, yet sleep with the night, though Ive always had trouble ascertaining what the bloody hell night is anyway. You cant set arbitrary times for it...you cant set fixed times, the night is subjective. You decide your own dark!!


Recently, my Girl  bought me a very desired eye mask, black material with a cotton stitched "Sammy" across its front, in pink I might add. She knows what will please me in a way nobody else can, and maybe thats the point. However, thats a discussion best served between two people as an affirmation, not as a fleeting glance here. 


So, I rise with the sun on my own terms, I am protected!!! I do however wake consistently due to the fact my neck and arm feel like an electric fire with the heat rods through my nerves..inside I die, like Sonny the frog from League of Gentlemen (cast your mind back..unless you haven't seen it, which means you're missing out on something far greater than sleep.


Summer months wreak havoc. I sleep less, im warm more, I sweat profusely at the idea of heating myself, and i dont know why, though theres many theories, and no matter how much I look online for an answer, there isn't one, except the Botox injection into the area, which sounds like a Freddy Krueger moment, though with the little sleep I have, I dont think I have to worry about him...although it comes to mind that speaking about a fictional character as if he is a tangible existing object, then im screwed anyway. No rest for the wicked, because if you do, "Freddy's coming for you"

Proving a negative

How do you prove a negative?


Some people would cry that trying to is a little silly, dabbling in a world skirting in physics and overtly using grey matter much more useful appropriated to the running of day to day life, though i wont comment on what those lives are filled with. Far be it from me.


Some people ask how do you prove a negative. The most obvious to call to mind being the lottery. Statistically, you have more chance of meeting Elvis in the form of a gerbil, sanguine, fluent in mandarin and somehow a brilliant fuck?


However, you can prove a negative. Some people do win the lottery. Some of them elect the publicity please box and shake their first post-hundred quid bottle of now throwaway wine over the nearest Camelot Executive thinking they too are reveling with you, perhaps not realising you're Britain 498th millionaire and this is the four hundred and ninety ninth pair of J.James shoes ruined (They always come prepared for this eventuality)


I always muse on the life of a Camelot worker. How would it be to work so close to so much wealth being appropriated, yet you cannot take part. Herein maybe lies the crux, perhaps these people are the ones most at ease with the negative proved. They accept it happens, yet they carry on regardless (I'm running unquoted, if you know any Camelot workers, please point them my way, I'd love to pick their brain)


Are these people the happiest people in the country? I really need to know this. How can you work so close to the negative being proved positive all the time, never being in the running for this slim glimpse at happiness, but operate life's wheel away, when in actuality, this isn't the modus operandi of the fates. The fates want you to fail from the outset. A newborn baby is more close to death than to life, but 6 billion people on the planet prove this wrong. We are constantly reminded of death, war, destruction, yet we manage to carve out a life. 


Does surrounding yourself near failure, poor ratings, walking under ladders, eating chips near seagulls...does this make you happier. If you bring unhappiness more to the table, do you truly appreciate the good things. 


Those that fight adversity, overcome horrific disease, walk the globe for charity blah blah blah (sardonic mood, please forgive planet) seem to have that aura of "Fuck You" and nothing bad is ever going to happen to me. You see it all the time, even eleven year olds are now scaling Everest to triumph for Wham Bars for every one and new fly-me helicopters for all children..every one's at proving positives. Are these people truly happy.


Which is it. Which brings happiness. What brings you that tingling buzz when you wake in a morning and think that's its another day and its going to be a good one. Does surrounding yourself near bad things highlight your good things, or does doing good things keep good things away.


Is it easier to enforce a positive than to disprove a negative. Or, are they equal on both sides of the equation.


Personally, today, i had many negatives proved, and i do not feel happier for it. 


Skipping six paragraphs and an ink blot of cliched digital tears on the page, its lead to some positives suddenly occurring to me. Within my skipped paragraphs and blotted tear i have figured something out. Eliminate negatives, you get left with positives. 


(Include area for further post reflection on what brings happiness)


Nothing happens by chance. Life is a formula, put ignorantly and a word for said many times before....


The more you put into your formula, the more you will get out, or the more likely you are to get what you want.


So, to my original point....how to prove a negative. Put simply, you need to embrace the negative. 


Like the Camelot worker...being so close to all those negatives being proved, I want the same. I don't care how many shoes get ruined, I'm going to keep trying. Bring those negatives to you and prove them wrong, doing so, i hope, is going to bring me a plateau of positives. My neck's fucked, that being a negative, but on reflection, i find positives from it. I think It's already begun.


No need for this to start http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AtHfzaBhSxo

Early mornings letting a love lie-in'

A reversal of situations, my girl being up all week at a sordid hour, but she arrives, and I get up early, letting have the full bed to stretch out in and sleep sleep. Not to say I don't get up late through the week, though I do have a differing set of problems. My pain prevents me from going to sleep of a night, though not going to bed I guess. However, no matter what time I sleep, I'll try to wake at a time my girl would wake, part out of empathy, part out of retaining a sense of continuity and grasp on the real world. I want to say something forced and tacky like "What is the real world". Sounds like something Bill Paxon would relish saying at the beginning of some mid-range film. But that doesn't change it none. I don't feel part of the world ticking by, I feel like I'm sat in my own microcosm of a world, it hasn't changed, peripheral moments change, i remain the same. Doctors come and go, ideas, prognosis, diagnosis, treatment, nothing, hopes swell and become swollen and pushed down. I don't change, I melt.

English pride, save St George and attach him with pins to a day where we can all get drunk for no reason other than to actually get drunk

Pissing in alleys between pubs. The proletariats demonstrable method for social commentary. I agree with the News of The World's opinion.

Everyone looks cooler smoking

Smoking in the rain. Delight on a timer with potential moments of misery and faliure. At least it's not windy. Then nature eats my pleasure! Smoking in shit weather is fine. The pleasure of smoking outweighs the farce of getting wet and having the lighter blown out five times before it takes. Trust me, smoking is cool

An Anthology of Dead thoughts: She is my reason

An Anthology of dead thoughts.

 November. It’s dark. It prevents activity. I crave activity, my physical world is slowly drawing in on me, and I resent it. At least the sun allows me to be in the air, let the world turn around me, and so it comes day by day, whatever it may be. Night follows night, follows morphine fog follows medicated numb barbs thrashing for supremacy in my body and I cannot fight it.

 I come to solace with difficulty, though if I whisper quietly, I still hear my own white whale…and I like it…

 Any day is the same of late, I wake, I eat, I think and I lose a little of what I was and surely don’t mourn demise, I wasn’t the human you’d embrace or love, or one you could shrug away, a silent melancholy surrounded me, unperceivable to most, but I carried its weight inside me. Its great jaws ever waiting…I must be wary, keep up my guard. I don’t like what I am when I am myself.

 It was the middle of winter when I cracked, it happened, my life at the time resembling my surroundings, rustic timbre of mechanical humdrum, the vulcanised rubber bristling through the depth of fluid on the cracked grit. Sky cracked and alive, motion and mountains of cloud, pregnant with their load, waiting the call from the maker, the gravity of earth, two objects of mass irresistibly drawn to each other and in my head, I soaked it up, an addition for the additives, a maelstrom of welling grief, I motioned to myself to take this moment, lock it down,  be a victim and savour the moment, then move…

 Herein lays the problem. A human moves and evolves, never stopping and restarting anew. Even when the intention is to change, it’s always a rehash, taking what was, cooking at 190degrees, sieving out the mental broth and throwing across the kitchen. This isn’t change, this is a recipe, and this is formulaic. This is taking what you have and remoulding, not really changing, the most banal expression of change.

 People move, because they transplant their idea, their want into a fresh surrounding, they imagine their life becoming changed, because their surroundings have changed. This cannot be true. You’re surrounding, the a priori of your life, is not you. You are in control, you determine your surroundings, and you control what you allow into your life.

 Yet, before I go, I wanted to walk down to the sea. I was blessed in this case, my proximity to it. On quiet days, you strain your neck, proffer an ear to the blank air and hope you can hear the wave’s crash. Other times, you advance towards it, when suddenly you’re met by a cacophony of noise, the salty water fighting amongst itself. This pleases me the most. As I let gravity pull me down the hill, not making so much effort in my steps as just allowing myself to be carried, I steal the sight of its waters, and steadily, without hesitation, im there.

 Summer was coughing and spluttering, the slow death into the brown hues of autumnal calm, the tides swelled and furrowed deeper each day, the deep blue becoming grey and green and all manners of strength as I look out.

 My place of strength was there, by that sea. I draw a power from its timeless menace, everlasting, unchanging. The sea need not to move, the earth moves around it. So its here I sit, I don’t think, I don’t reflect, I just let it fill me. I could scream at the ocean, it would laugh right back at me. I mean not a moment, not the most meagre portion. It’s this comparison I revel in the most, what could I truly do, in the expanse of it, all that truly matters, when faced with the blue charge. This lesson I know now, but not then.

 I watch the people amble by, coursing through the concrete, grasping their cheap purchase of buckets and spades, their momentary pleasure, something to write home about, something to tell the kids. It seems to me like they’re missing the bigger picture, but I do tend do geta little self righteous…so all are oblivious to the real lesson that is here to be taught in my mind. They're all wildlife, and not in a literal sense. They're cattle for a greater machine oblivious to a world there for their taking, a world for each person, you create your own path, you choose what comes in and out, whats in is uncontrollable, but you have the choice to bring it in to your world, so you have that choice to bring it out. 

Everything happens for a reason. I have many reasons. She is one. She is the ocean. She is endless.

Pain Clinic

Attended the pain clinic, had the pain clinics procedure, feel like someones Voodoo doll, but without any euphoric effects of hearing a great song.

Instead of playing twenty questions with a Neurosurgeon, i played twenty injections with the pain surgeon.

Makes everything else hurt that hurt less before hurt more. General hurt, generally pained. Always pain. Usually as i wake..till the moment i sleep...until i wake throughout the period of time i should sleep, until i wake for the day.. repetitive infinitum

A facebook post pretty much summing up my medical condition twatcrisis for the past year and a half....so excuse the poor english, i was thinktyping

Yeah, i had a paracetamol drip a few weeks ago because they couldn't authorise the morphine till the morning when they got hold of the GP that prescribed me it, and im taking 440mg of Morphine a day in modified release form, horrible stuff..but thats another story..

Prognosis thus far

Two bilateral prolapsed discs c5 and c6..or c6 and c7(can never remember), with them causing bad nerve damage to the root and cord of each of their areas causing the most unimaginable pain when the nerves get jarred, like a hot knitting needle going through my neck, bizarre pain. Also got paresthesia in my right arm (makes my arm feel like a shook up bottle of cola, the pins and needles haven't gone since the beginning) and now paralysis in the c6 affected area in my right arm (which only happened 14months into this nightmare) and neuropathic pain, burning back etc, and to top it off muscle spasms to die for (which is what im having an op for tomorrow) and i get the most horrendous migraines from the neck as well, sometimes i like them in way that its a differing pain to take my mind away from neck pain..but by god its not a fair swap at all, they're the worst things)

The original idea was to wait a few months and take conservative approach, lots of rest and codeine and basically 28 tablets or so for brekkie, lunch and a nutritious dinner as well....and if there was no improvement they would do a double disectomy and replace the discs with some hipbone (the neck bone connected to the.....back bone, the back bone connected to the...hip bone)

This didnt happen.

They then took the conservative approach for the next seventeen months, the neurosurgeon not doing anything but MRI's every three months. He promised me the disectomy come last march in September, but in march he threw in the towel and said he couldn't fix me as...

In February i got a lot worse, Ive been getting worse and worse for months, and the MRI wasn't showing anything getting worse, but the neurosurgeon kept saying wait another three months, but then my right arm went all floppy joe, and i couldn't feel it, then random things stopped working, like cant wee, then can, my gag reflex stops, so sometimes i swallow and it goes directly into my lungs instead of my stomach blah blah, and my GP was and had seen all this and was screaming with me at Sheffield Neurosurgery Department to admit me double quick but my surgeon wouldn't, said if the MRI wasn't showing any worsening or improving then no point..but he was very wrong.

Got referred to a new neurosurgeon after he threw in the towel, then the new guy says he thinks that although i have the two prolapsed discs, the problem is far more extensive (after going over my case notes, GP reports, pain clinic session and operation reports) ad that my nerves are dying off on their own, and that the discs set this off, but he doesn't know why (and MRI's dont see this), so he ordered up a batch of tests which i had last month (nerve conduction, EEG/EMG etc) and then i asked him "why haven't these been done before now, are they new tests?) to which he replied they weren't, and i got more furious than ive ever been, because the previous surgeon hadn't done any of these basic neurological tests in 17months..........so that twat has basically disabled me by his ineptitude..but the new guy couldn't and wouldn't make his colleague culpable, nut once Ive got a final diagnosis im going to raise a massive storm through P.A.L.S...anyway, got the op tomorrow and the results of the neuro tests in a week where i will find out what is bloody happening in my neck, which nerves are working, which aren't, where they're not working, why they're not working blah blah.

Once we know this, we have a diagnosis, and because of that, they will know whether they can do anything surgically at the Neurology Department, or whether its something that cannot be fixed, upon which its a job for a pain clinic to find out if they can eradicate the daily pain....

So i wait with baited breath. Jan16th of 2009 i got admitted. Im still waiting for an answer. Hopefully next week will be a full diagnosis and not the end of a chapter and the start of another. I've been mostly bedbound/big comfy reclining armchair for all this time resting and waiting. I dont get my hopes up anymore. I cnt even play my guitar properly because of my arm being ruined, and that was my greatest pleasure...

JAMES, SORRY FOR HIJACKING YOUR STATUS THREAD IN SUCH A LARGE MANNER, BUT HAVE A READ THROUGH AND IF YOU RECOGNISE ANYTHING SIMILAR, TELL THE GP ETC, OR LEARN FROM MY MISTAKES AND NOT QUESTIONING THE DAMN DOCTORS.

I really hope you get sorted mate, its no fun at all.

I stretched awake, monstrous movement and writing limbs, I wrestled with the notion of leaving my slumber. I never open my eyes slowly, as romantic moments in fim noir would have you believe. I snap awake, as if the greatest danger would be waiting for me. It’s the strangest moment of my day every day, it takes time for my senses to come to me and for those few seconds, I know what it is to be truly lost, to be abandoned in my own mind. I recognise nothing, I understand nothing, and I am not myself.

It doesn’t last, my trapdoors opening up, the fluid of my thoughts begins to channel through the proper lines and I become "me" again. Once I enjoyed this moment, because for a moment, I couldn’t remember anything, so I couldn’t remember how much I hurt. I forgot what had come before and I was grateful for that slight release, but as I became aware, my heart became like lead.

I swing my legs to the carpet and feel that strange wiry mess upon my feet and scratch my head. Usually, this is accompanied by the arrival of children to the local school, their cries of glee at a new day stood in stark contrast to my rebuttal of what I had to come. Its windy outside, I see the manufactured, there but for the grace of the council play trees, their branches dancing in the strong northerly. Today would be a good day for a walk, but today I can’t.

I hear the pap of a deep baritone horn; my friend has arrived. I have slept too late. I go to open the door and let him in. his usual cries bring me a little warmth. He always makes me smile.

“Alright nonce breath, you just got up…you lazy fuck” he spits out without thought. Our natural conversation has been developed over many years of friendship, to the point where we can understand every subtle nuance, every movement. He’s been a good friend, not your conventional one mind, but is conventional..and who on this feckless earth wants average in a friend, but that’s something for later introspection.